ARF Garden Tour Focuses On Southampton This Year

Southampton Village was bustling on Friday with its stores and schools and real estate offices, its workers and traffic and visitors.

But all was quiet in the garden of Ashley and Jeff McDermott on South Main Street, one of six stops in the village this Saturday, when the Animal Rescue Fund gives its annual garden tour.

Here, water fountains splashed refreshingly and grass paths led the way to a series of large and small “rooms” defined by brick walls, iron gates, secret doors and seating plus beech trees, boxwood, purple allium and mostly white peonies.

“I’m very pleased to see it in its glory,” said Mark Fichandler, an interior designer and a garden tour chairman, who’d last visited in winter but even then could see the beauty in the garden’s hard structure.

Mr. Fichandler noted its “classic mood,” its delicate balance of restraint and softness, and how that makes it a fine fit for the McDermotts’ stately, ivy-cloaked brick home.

Their landscape designer, Elizabeth O’Rourke, said later by phone from Nantucket that she’d had fun with the homeowners, and with the design, after taking the project on in 2012. The McDermotts gave her license to add “a few bold elements,” like the fountain in a formal knot garden, one highlight of the property, and she was able to make the “rooms” suit the changing seasons in accordance with the timing of the homeowners’ occupancy. “It was exciting,” she said.

Another stop on Saturday’s tour will be the garden of Margaret and R. Peter Sullivan on Wyandanch Lane. Designed by Lear+Mahoney Landscape Associates, it’s described as “American-style,” a modern twist on classical design. A butterfly garden, espaliered pear trees, magnolias, a labyrinth and a water feature are just some components of this property.

Anke and Juergen Friedrich’s home on Ox Pasture Road was designed by Grosvenor Atterbury, the architect of the original Parrish Art Museum. The 10 acres surrounding the house are described as pastoral, evoking classic estates of the early 20th century with sweeping lawns, stately trees, climbing roses, sculptures and a grass tennis court.

On Coopers Neck Lane, “Fairwind” demonstrates the solution landscape designer Edwina von Gal and landscape architect Christopher LaGuardia came up with to save a massive linden tree that stood where a new house was to go. Trees—weeping cherry, red and Norway maples, birches and a tulip tree—are the inspiration on this property, whose “rooms” are distinguished by light and shade as well as textures and fragrances.

The garden of Irene and Bernard Schwartz at “Creekside,” their home on Halsey Neck Lane, features hedgerows, London plane trees and natural plantings on Heady Creek, where the lawn leads to a small dock. The arborist Ray Smith guided the selection and pruning of the trees, including nine mature apple trees, and there is a “charming perennial garden” in front of the guest house, according to ARF’s tour brochure.

Also on Halsey Neck Lane is the cheerful garden of Katharina Otto-Bernstein and Nathan Bernstein at “Taylor’s Creek.” Here, “a riot of red, coral, yellow, blue and white flowers dominates” and also complements a Mediterranean-style house with periwinkle trim. Native shadbush provide a backdrop.

The gardens can be visited in any order from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Lisa and Donald Jackson will host a cocktail reception the day of the tour at “Blue Haven,” their home on First Neck Lane, from 5 to 6:30 p.m. Tickets to the tour plus the reception cost $175 and can be purchased by calling (631) 537-0400, at www.arfhamptons.org, or at the ARF Adoption Center in Wainscott. Tickets cost $85 for the tour alone and are available at a number of garden and other stores as well as through ARF.